Category: Political Correctness

About a month ago, an acquaintance emailed me about a hate crime in Lincoln, NE. His only commentary was, “when are you going to wise up?” That remark was followed by a link to a blog post about the attack, including photos that couldn’t be posted by major news outlets. According to the story, an unnamed 33-year-old woman was viciously attacked in her home as she slept by three masked men who stripped her naked, bound her hands and feet with zip-ties, carved homophobic slurs into her arm and her stomach, spray-painted similar slurs on the walls, poured gasoline on the floor and lit the house on fire.

As soon as I read the story, I smelled a stage act. I didn’t want to immediately post about it because there wasn’t much info in the news reports I was able to find. The spray-painted slurs were on the inside of the house, not the outside – in the basement, no less. The slurs cut into her skin were on her stomach and arm, places she can easily reach. I’ve studied the psychology of people who commit hate crimes, and none of that makes any sense.

A person who would go so far as to attack a person for their sexual orientation or their race or religion is doing so in an attempt to humiliate and intimidate that person AND all of the people in the vicinity who are associated with that person. When a hate crime involves defacing property, they’re trying to publicly identify that person as gay, lesbian, black, Hispanic, Jewish, whatever the bias may be against. They want everyone in the neighborhood to know what they see that person as being. When a hate crime involves arson, they’re usually trying to destroy evidence; whether it be DNA, footprints or blood spatter, there’s a purpose to trying to burn the home down and they make sure that the fire gets rolling (meaning they don’t just pour gasoline on the Formica in the kitchen and run away). Hate crimes rarely involve mutilation – that’s typically something that a jilted lover does when they’re killing the object of their affection, and it’s not usually superficial. It’s brutal.

If this were a genuine hate crime, any of these things could potentially have been done. All three together, and all very superficially? Extremely unlikely.

Today, it was announced that 33-year-old Charlie Rogers, formerly #33 for the Nebraska Cornhuskers women’s basketball team, was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of false reporting to the police. Among the evidence police released were inconsistent statements from the victim, gloves (with Rogers’ own DNA inside them – she told investigators they were not hers and were left by the perps), zip ties and a utility knife, and no blood on the bedspread where Rogers was allegedly attacked.

At first, Rogers didn’t want her name or face publicized. Then, when a handful of people questioned whether the attack might have been staged – it was never questioned by the MSM, and the major players in the conservative blogosphere still haven’t picked up on it – she suddenly decided to talk to the press. In the entire interview, I didn’t hear her talk about herself once. She makes statements about “my world” and feeling like “a pawn”, but she largely only talks about everyone else.

According to Lincoln police chief Jim Peschong, Rogers had written the following online: “So maybe I’m too idealistic but I believe way deep inside me that we can make things better for everyone. I will be a catalyst. I will do what it takes. I will. Watch me.”Beth Rigatuso, the president of Heartland Pride, said, “If in fact she did do this to herself, it points to a much larger issue of self-hatred. It doesn’t diminish the fact that hate crimes happen all the time all across the U.S.”

Rigatuso is wrong on both counts. This had nothing to do with self-hatred, and to claim that kind of thing is an enormous cop-out. She’s making excuses for Rogers’ behavior in the hopes of not having to accept responsibility, and the gay community should take some. She’s not the first to stage a hate crime or falsely claim a hate crime took place, yet the gay community, rather than calling these people out, pretend the incidents didn’t happen.

Joseph Baken claimed that he was attacked in the street outside a gay bar, even posted photos of his facial injuries – except he got the injuries while trying to do a back flip off of a curb outside the bar. Aimee Whitchurch and Christel Conklin called police over the words “kill the gay” being spray painted on their garage door and a noose being hung on their front door, but it was determined they did it themselves. Quinn Matney claimed that a complete stranger walked up to him on his college campus, said “here is a taste of hell”, called him a derogatory name and then branded him, leaving third- and fourth-degree burns on his hand – but he did it to himself. Ryan Grant Watson claimed he was attacked by a black man who called him a homophobic slur, but it was invented, too. Alexandra Pennell claimed that someone was stuffing anti-gay threat letters under her dorm room door at Central Connecticut State University, but that was also determined to be a hoax.

Rigatuso is correct – hate crimes do happen. Only it seems that these days there are far more fakes out there. We all know the stories of Mathew Shepard, Brandon Teena and Gwen Araujo, but here in the United States those stories are few and far between. In the interim, we’ve just had a major upheaval over comments made by Chick-Fil-A CFO Dan Cathy – I think that has a lot to do with this recent spate of staged anti-gay hate crimes. The purpose of these incidents, I think, is twofold: first, these are people who want attention. Second, they want to find some way, any way, to prove that we need to put a stop to these right-wing hatemongers.

They think if they have to fake it, the ends justify the means. The problem with that belief is that none of the people involved in beating, raping and killing Mathew Shepard, Brandon Teena and Gwen Araujo ever claimed to be Christians or right-wingers.

I’m at a loss as to how we’ve determined that Christians and conservatives are responsible for crimes committed largely by non-religious rednecks. I’m at even more of a loss to excuse the intolerance of the gay left; of the Quinn Matney incident, Jeff DeLuca said, “He still needs our support. It’s a different kind of support than we originally anticipated having to offer. He’s still a valued member of our community and we want to make sure his health, safety and peace of mind are at the forefront of what we’re doing for him.”

When was the last time a gay leftist was so compassionate to any conservative, let alone a gay conservative?

This year will mark the 40th anniversary of the massacre of eleven Israeli athletes after a 21-hour standoff in Munich during the XX Olympiad. The International Olympic Committee, however, has steadfastly refused to hold a moment of silence to remember the athletes and coaches who were kidnapped, beaten and then killed.

They’ve held moments of silence before. In 1984, a moment of silence was observed for war-torn Sarajevo. At the close of the 1996 games, they held a moment of silence for the victims of the Centennial Park bombing (which took place during the games). In 2002, less than a year after 9/11, our colors were carried in straight from the ashes of Ground Zero and our tattered flag was raised amid a moment of silence. THIS year, a moment of silence was observed along with a video tribute to Brits who died during the transit bombings the day after London won the 2012 games. Never, not once, in any Olympiad since 1972 has the IOC allowed a moment of silence to remember the innocent sons, husbands, and fathers from Israel who were slaughtered by terrorists. They’ve allowed commemoration for everyone impacted by jihadi terrorism except for Israelis.

It seems to me that the IOC’s message is clear: the Israelis deserved it. We’ll play along just enough to get by, but deep down we believe they deserved it because they’re dirty Jews and we’re hoping that the Palestinians eventually just kill them all.

I might be taking it a bit far there, but how else can I interpret their utter lack of recognition for one of the most brazenly inhumane terrorist attacks in modern history? They’ll hold a moment of silence for everyone BUT the Israelis? Really? What else can we glean from that?

Guri Weinberg, the son of slain wrestling coach Moishe Weinberg, recently wrote a very strong-worded op-ed about his interaction with the IOC. Guri is now an actor; he was only a month old when his father was murdered at the Olympic village. He, along with other widows and children of the slain athletes, has long hoped and argued for a moment of silence to remember their calm bravery before their deaths. It was hoped in 1996 that such recognition would finally come to pass, but when the group met with Alex Gilady – who at the time was a member of the IOC’s Radio & Television Commission and is the Senior VP of NBC Sports today – they were met again with disappointment. He told them his hands were tied, then made an astonishing comment: if they held a moment of silence for the Israelis who had died that day, they would also have to hold a moment of silence for the Palestinians who had died during the botched rescue attempt.

Those Palestinians weren’t athletes. They were terrorists. They were there to use collateral damage to chastise the IOC for not recognizing Palestine as a member and force Israel to release more than 200 other terrorists from jails all over the world (it’s worth noting that among the prisoners were a pair of German Neo Nazis from the group that had helped the terrorists get fake ID’s and detailed info on the Olympic village and where different athletes were being housed). I’m absolutely floored that anyone in the IOC would actually believe that recognizing that event would also require paying homage to the terrorists who carried out the act.

The day after the massacre, all of the flags in the Olympic stadium were lowered to half-mast. Each and every Arab nation represented demanded that their flags not be lowered for dead Jews. Since the massacre, Iranian athletes have become famous for withdrawing from events where they would have to compete against Jews. The IOC claims to want to uphold the “spirit of the Olympic Charter”, yet when extreme unsportsmanlike behavior rears its ugly head, they back down and slink away as if they are completely impotent.

In a telling move, Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, said, “Sports are meant for peace, not for racism… Sports are a bridge to love, interconnection, and spreading of peace among nations; it must not be a cause of division and spreading of racism between them [nations].” That statement leaves me in a fury. He said that in a letter to IOC president Jacques Rogge, the coward who openly refused (almost mocked) to allow a moment of silence during the 2012 opening ceremony in London. In that same letter, he referred to the massacre as the “Munich Operation” and did not acknowledge the loss of innocent Israeli life with so much as a glimmer of humanity. Such innuendo makes me wish Israel would simply say “to hell with this ridiculous ‘peace’ process” and clear out every Palestinian camp and neighborhood.

Mahmoud Abbas is currently the head of the PLO and the president of the Palestinian National Authority. He didn’t get there by sitting on his laurels. Abu Daoud, now the only surviving planner of the attack, wrote in his autobiography that Abbas funded the operation and knew exactly what they were going to be doing. Abbas’ hands are just as bloody as Yasser Arafat’s were, and our government officials still try to talk to him as if he really wants peace. He, along with every Arab nation that sits on the IOC, is perfectly happy to pretend that it either didn’t happen or was justified – and the IOC is happy to oblige.

Every single delegate to the IOC who does not stand up and scream bloody murder about these injustices is an accomplice to them. I include the US delegate in that.

In his anti-execution documentary Into The Abyss, Werner Herzog asked a prison chaplain, “why does God allow capital punishment?” In my last post I responded that the better question is, “why does God allow sociopaths to continually victimize innocent people?” Not one filmmaker or movie star has asked that question. I’m here to tell you that the arguments against the death penalty are philosophically shallow and intellectually vapid.

One of the statements made by Delbert Burkett, father of convicted murderer Jason Burkett – whose partner in crime was executed by the State of Texas in 2010 – was, “killin’ Michael Perry isn’t gonna bring those people back. It’s not gonna raise anyone from the dead.” That’s a comment made by every anti-death penalty celebrity in the world, particularly in the US. Capital punishment is useless because it doesn’t bring back the victims, they say. It’s cruel and unusual punishment. We never have the right to take a human life.

(The same group of people will demand abortion rights in the name of a woman’s right to choose and find ways to dehumanize a human fetus to rationalize murder to their so-called consciences. Go figure.)

That argument is emotional at best. It carries no truth. If our aim was to bring back the dead, then there would be no point to punishment at all. Why sentence someone to life in prison? I mean, it’s not going to bring their victims back from the dead. Why would we send a man to prison for kidnapping and raping his ex-wife? It’s not going to stop her nightmares or put a stop to her fear of quiet parking lots. Why should we send a man to prison for stealing cars and breaking into homes? It’s not going to replace the lost sense of security that his victims deal with now.

See how silly that argument is? If we’re not using the death penalty at least in part for punishment, then there would be no point – and punishment is half of the point. The other half is deterrence. Those who oppose the death penalty claim that it doesn’t deter anything. I wholeheartedly disagree, and the numbers prove that argument wrong.

According to the numbers, when the Supreme Court halted the death penalty for a few years in the early 1970’s, murder rates skyrocketed almost overnight. It took time for the death penalty to be re-instituted, and once it began to gain traction again in the 1990’s murder rates dropped by nearly half. During a long portion of time, many murderers confessed and later said they did so because they knew they wouldn’t be executed for their crimes. As for complete deterrence, nobody has any illusion that the death penalty will put an end to murder; if elimination were our standard for punishment, we still wouldn’t be putting people in prison. Capital punishment has been proven to deter murders, but we’ll never really know how many people have been stopped from committing murder for pecuniary gain because nobody in their right mind will admit that they considered committing a murder. Those who would admit it are likely in dire need of regular phenobarbital treatments, anyway.

It’s not as if I have never struggled with my belief in the death penalty. Because I carry a gun, I have considered at length whether I would be willing to take a life if the situation called for it (I don’t think you should carry a gun unless you ARE willing to kill, and you’d best know how you feel and what you think about doing it before you end up needing to in self-defense). I won’t know until and unless I ever have to commit the act, and I hope like hell that I never have to, but I’ve also been faced with death in my duties as an EMT and I have given death a lot of consideration – both my own death and that of others. My faith tells me I should forgive. My faith also tells me I should be able to balance justice and mercy, and know when the greatest lesson will be learned from one or the other.

So many criminals in our society depend on the faith-based mercy of others. That dependence has been fulfilled so often that it has morphed into expectation. I have met so few inmates who actually intended to change their behavior that I have a hard time believing that any of them care to change. I have met many, however, who struck me as being so evil that their very presence in the room made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I’ve worked with inmates whose self-serving behavior and subsequent excuses screamed “PSYCHOPATH!”

Our justice system will never be perfect, but we have to be willing to accept that there is evil in this world and there always will be no matter what we do. As long as human beings are running the show in this world there will be imperfection. Evil will persist no matter how much we wish we could reason everyone into being good. We have to be willing to accept being uncomfortable once in a while to make sure evil doesn’t win. That means that we have to accept that not all life is indispensible; those who have made the choice to objectify others and make victims out of innocent people forfeit their lives, even to the point of execution.

As for the argument that it’s cruel and unusual punishment…horsefeathers. Ask the victims about the fear and extreme pain they experienced before they died. Ask their surviving friends and family what they experience every day after losing their loved one.

The title of this post was a question posed by documentarian Werner Herzog. In the opening of his documentary film Into The Abyss, Herzog is talking to one of the chaplains from Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice’s infamous Walls Unit – the death house. After allowing the chaplain to explain his role during an execution, Herzog asks this question.

Throughout the entire documentary, he never once asks, “why does God allow evil people to live and commit murder?”

I remember going home to Houston for Thanksgiving in 2001 and seeing news that the body of a woman had been found in a lake. That woman turned out to be 50-year-old Sandra Stotler. In her home several days after she had actually been killed, police found a grisly scene. Lights and the TV were still on, having never been turned off by the killer. Stotler had been baking cookies; a bowl of raw cookie dough and a half-finished sheet of unbaked cookies still sat out where she’d left them. Blood had been splattered all over the door frame and wall. Blood on the floor showed that after she’d been shot once, she had hit the floor and tried to scoot away, but the gunman shot her a second time where she lay. A red Camaro convertible was missing and a blood trail showed that the body had been dragged out through the garage on the side of the big ranch-style house in the upscale Highlands Ranch subdivision of Conroe, Texas.

Conroe isn’t far from where I grew up. About an hour and a half due North of Houston, right on I-45, sits this quiet little town that I remember driving through during the summer when my youth group would go up to Huntsville for camp. That a murder like this would happen in such a quiet, well-guarded neighborhood was very rattling to a lot of people I know. What’s most chilling of all is that the crime that turned into a triple homicide later on was all over a car.

Michael James Perry and Jason Aaron Burkett were best friends. They had lived together for a stretch in a camper, then later in an apartment in Conroe. For a time they had a racket going with Burkett’s girlfriend where one would steal checks, one would forge them, and the girlfriend would then cash them. As children, they both had serious issues. Burkett’s father was a raging alcoholic and drug addict, and as of this year is on his fifth prison sentence (back in 1973 Dennis Burkett was a high school football star and landed a full scholarship to the University of Texas to play college ball but he dropped out and went his own way – which is why I sincerely disliked the turn of events in the final season of Friday Night Lights). Burkett’s older brother is also in prison for a dangerous felony, making criminal behavior a family profession. Burkett has issues; Perry is worse.

As a child, Perry was diagnosed with “oppositional defiant disorder”, which is the childhood diagnosis of sociopathy. Perry grew up to be a psychopath (for those who never took psych classes in college, a literal psychopath is a person diagnosed as a sociopath – basically a person who views people as objects and has absolutely no conscience). He ran away from home frequently, pawned his parent’s valuables, stole their van and wrecked it, and broke into a neighbor’s home for the sole purpose of doing damage. His parents sent him to “Outward Bound”, an outdoors rough-it camp for troubled kids; he quit after a few days. His parents filed charges against him and had him sent to Boys Town in Nebraska, where he promptly told one of the “house parents” that he was one of the people “trying to rape and murder your kids.” He ended up being locked in the secure section of Boys Town for four months, later being sent to a “secure school” in Mexico. As soon as he turned 18 he went homeless; he refused to hold down a job and tried to forge prescriptions to get pills to sell for dope money. Somewhere in the midst of that was when he fell in with Jason Burkett.

Two days after the murder, Perry was pulled over in the red Camaro and presented an ID bearing the name and info of Adam Stotler – the 16-year-old son of Sandra Stotler. He was arrested, booked and released. Three days after his arrest, he and Jason Burkett were spotted in Adam Stotler’s stolen Isuzu Rodeo. They ran over a deputy and had a shoot-out with police; officers later testified that Perry was shouting, “balls to the wall!” They were arrested, and almost immediately Jason Burkett told them where to find two additional bodies. Police discovered the bodies of Adam Stotler and his best friend Jeremy Richardson next to another home in Highlands Ranch. Evidence included cigarette butts with Perry’s DNA on them. The shotgun used in the murders was stolen from a relative of Burkett. On top of all of this, the pair went to a bar in the two vehicles they’d stolen and claimed to everyone in the bar that they’d won the lottery, cashed the tickets at a gas station and went out to buy two supposedly brand-new vehicles. They took several people for a spin in the cars and even showed off the shotgun they’d used – and Perry later pointed the shotgun at Burkett’s girlfriend and threatened to kill her.

Perry confessed, and during the confession he gave facts that only the perpetrators would have known. He later claimed that a detective pointed a gun at him and forced him to confess, then even later claimed that evidence had somehow proven that the murders had happened on the 27th. The problem with that? Stotler’s body was found on October 27th, three days after the murders – and she had been there for some time, wrapped in the comforter and top sheet from her bed. Some of the crime scene footage is shown in the documentary, and I can tell just by the video footage that the blood on the floor was OLD.

Perry had an excuse for everything. During the interviews, he never referred to the victims as the true victims; he only talked about how he’s been wronged. It didn’t help that, as soon as he sat down and started talking, Herzog said, “I respect you and I believe that what’s been done to you is wrong.” Not once does Perry ever acknowledge that several people’s lives were irrevocably changed by what happened. In fact, it’s revealed that in his final statement before his execution, Perry said, “Yes, I want to start off by saying to everyone know that’s involved in this atrocity that they are all forgiven by me.”

Never does Herzog ever question Perry to his face on his claims that he, the convict, has been wronged. He never asks Perry about his long, storied history of sociopathic behavior. All he does is try to present the case against executions.

I’m tired of hearing people ask why God allows capital punishment. Life is precious, but when the person in question has made the choice to live their life in such a way that they have done nothing but victimize people for their own gain, justice must be done. Perry is guilty as hell, as is Burkett. Just once I’d like to hear one of these foreigners who bag on us for using the death penalty ask why God allows violent sociopaths to continually victimize innocent souls – and stop defending the killers.

I’ve finally decided on the book I’m going to finish first – it’ll be a nonfiction political/social commentary, and I’m tentatively calling it “Self-Loathing Closet Case” for the infamous insult that so many gay leftists like to throw at me.

I’m about to go off on all of the leftists out there. Here’s why: every single leftist on Twitter says the same thing to me when they see that I’m a lesbian and I’m politically conservative. “Wake up! They don’t want you to marry! How can you vote against yourself?!?”

I’m sick of hearing that.

I fail to understand why I should vote solely on the basis of what’s best for me. I’m a lesbian; I’m part of a group that makes up no more than 8% of the population. Expecting the entire population to cater to me because of my sexual orientation on a singular centuries-old issue is ludicrous; I’ve said before that I’d like to marry one day, but it’s not going to happen overnight and I think we need to be wiser about how we obtain marriage rights.

Liberals, for their part, want welfare, socialized healthcare, higher taxes on the wealthy…all in the name of doing what’s right for everyone, not just one group. It’s selfish, they say, to only care about issues that only affect your social group. It’s wrong to be selfish. It’s wrong to be greedy. You should care about more than just yourself and your vote and beliefs should include everyone – at least, as long as the “everyone” you’re talking about is 100% liberal.

Taking that into consideration, why does it make any sense for liberals to tell me I must hate myself because I vote for a political ideal that doesn’t agree with gay marriage? They say it as if it is the only issue I should care about, and I should damn and curse any politician who doesn’t believe in my right to marry.

Here’s the big problem with that line of thinking: most Democrats don’t support gay marriage, either. If you listen to most vocal liberals, they’ll have you believe that gays should all be liberal because everyone who is against gay rights is a conservative. That is a bald-faced lie straight from the pits of hell. I’ve had more conservative friends come out in support of me in the past couple of years than I would have ever believed would. VERY few of the liberals in my life have stuck around. I can count them on the fingers of one hand and still have fingers left over. Even conservative pundit Lee Doren weighed in on gay marriage, declaring that he supports my right to marry and he hopes that the GOP, traditionally the party of civil rights, will be the first to get behind it.

Democrats, however, are not nearly as behind gay marriage as many of these people would have us believe. Proposition 8 – the law meant to repeal gay marriage rights in uber-liberal California – was passed with the help of hundreds of thousands of Democrats who still believe gay marriage to be wrong. Barack Obama has said many times that he believes marriage to be sacred, a pact between one man and one woman. When pressed on it by the gay community, he finally said, “well, how about this…if you challenge DOMA in court, I won’t defend it, how’s that?”

I see that cowardly posturing for exactly what it is: a politician trying to fish for as many votes as he can. The gay liberals all snap to and kiss his feet, ready to lap up the crumbs he offers while he works to destroy our Constitutional rights. They’d rather vote for a man who is willing to lie about his intentions than even entertain the beliefs of a party who will listen if given the chance. The very instant they come across someone like me, someone who refuses to just take what the party of choice is willing to offer right now because there are other dangers lurking within that party, they start hurling insults and death threats to try and put my leash back on and drag me back to the gay liberal plantation.

I won’t go.

Who the hell do you think you are? You claim to be the pillars of tolerance, yet when faced with someone who disagrees, you pitch a hissy fit and try to degrade me by calling me names and threatening bodily injury? Are you serious? Who appointed you the keeper of morals? If it’s wrong for the religious right to impose their morals on you, what makes it acceptable for you to impose your morals on me by way of denigration?

I think for myself. Unlike the liberals (who all vote to try to assuage their own emotions), I am capable of looking at all of the issues, include them all in my beliefs and decide based on the totality of those issues what my beliefs are and who deserves my support. Insulting me when I disagree is not exactly the best way to convince me that I should be liberal – it is, however, the surest way to help me be sure of my conservative values. You can be damn sure of one thing…

I just got into a tit-for-tat with a Twitter user who apparently thinks I’m ignorant for being a lesbian who isn’t interested in gay marriage rights. He isn’t the first to say something like that (although “ignorant” is probably the nicest thing I’ve been called by a liberal after hearing that I refuse to vote solely on the basis of which candidate is for gay marriage rights). He certainly won’t be the last. What’s more interesting is that the conversation started over a comment that Obama couldn’t be a Marxist because he’s a millionaire “moderate”. He made that comment to actor Adam Baldwin.

The user I was responding to said it was “sad” that I’m part of a political group that is against me. That’s exactly what he said. THEN he wanted me to “name one GOP member who is for gay marriage.”

That’s when I said it: I’m not for gay marriage. Not that I’m against it, I’m just not for it at the moment. That was when kingfish called me a bigot, Baldwin got sarcastic with him, and I ended the discussion – because we weren’t having a discussion. It was a bashing session, which is the only thing today’s liberals are capable of most of the time.

Here’s my problem: there are much more important things right now than gay marriage. I have blogged before that I would like to be able to marry my girlfriend one day, but now it just isn’t going to happen. This isn’t all that much like the civil rights fight of the 60’s; we’re not talking about something as obvious as skin color here. DADT has been repealed. That was the one sticking point with me, the one block to my rights as a gay American that I was angriest about. The government was already booted out of my bedroom. They don’t have any right to tell me that I can’t love who I love. Now they can’t tell me that I can’t serve my country, and that’s a huge deal for me.

Marriage, though? That’s a fight we’re not going to win overnight, and there are other issues that need to be faced before we can hope to address gay marriage.

Liberalism is a danger that it wasn’t before. There was a time when being liberal was important; liberal views helped free the slaves, end Jim Crow laws, end segregation…but then liberalism took an extreme twist. Somewhere in the 1970’s, liberalism morphed into a precursor to the extreme it is today. Bernard Goldberg, one of my favorite journalists, still considers himself a “classic liberal”. A classic liberal doesn’t believe in taxing the wealthy above everyone else or putting limits on free speech via the so-called “fairness doctrine”. A classic liberal doesn’t believe in social engineering by forcing gas prices into the stratosphere to bully people into “green alternatives” and other such nonsense. Your run-of-the-mill liberal, however, will call conservative women foul names, call those who disagree bigots and racists, then attack conservatives as liars and homophobes – all while their own people give us legislation like DADT and DOMA and they all scream for more civility.

Any more of this tolerance of theirs and my head might explode.

Every single time I get into a tangle with a liberal, be it on Twitter, a news article, or some other forum for political discussion, they always say the same things:

Liberal: how can you be FOR a group that is against you?

Mel: they’re not against me.

Lib: name one GOP candidate who is for gay marriage.

Mel: when did marriage enter the picture? The issue isn’t gay marriage…

Lib: it’s the ONLY issue! They won’t let you marry! They HATE you!

Mel: actually, the only person who hates me right now is you.

Lib: BIGOT!

Mel: You cannot be serious…

The funniest part is when they try to define the word “bigot” for me, as if I never studied English in college and have no idea what the word means. On this occasion, kingfish actually linked Wikipedia (insert Soledad O’Brien joke here) for the definition. Here’s the official Webster version:

Bigot (noun): a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

Short breakdown: I’m not against gays. I AM gay. Believing that the economy and several Constitutional issues are more important than gay marriage at the moment does not now and will never make me anti-gay. Disagreeing with the running liberal narrative that gay marriage should be the only thing I care about does not make me anti-gay or anti-marriage. The only thing I refuse to tolerate is intellectual laziness – and when you call me a bigot over the gay marriage issue, you are being intellectually lazy.

To answer your original statement, kingfish, yes, it is entirely possible for a rich man to be a Marxist (calling Obama a moderate is ludicrous on its face). Those who agitate “the people” in favor of Marxism are often those already holding the purse strings – the elites who want to tell us all how we should live. Isn’t that the very hypocrisy you accuse Christians of? Or do you really think that Christians are the only ones capable of being liars and thieves?

If my rights as an American citizen are taken from me – if America ceases to be the independent and free nation it was created to be – my right to marry my girlfriend will not matter in the least. That is why other issues are more important than gay marriage for me, because I see liberals calling our current extremist of a president a “moderate” and I see exactly where this is headed if we don’t do something about it.

Liberals love to mislead people. They have made it into an art form. When Sandra Fluke went before Nancy Pelosi’s “mock committee” to “testify” about the need for insurance coverage for contraceptives, the deception was on full display, and not one member of the media has vetted this woman or her claims.

Why would they? She’s the perfect proof of their claim that conservatives hate women.

I would beg to differ. I’m a gold star lesbian – that means I have never slept with a man. I am actually kinda proud of that status. I am also politically conservative. I have not met a single conservative who seriously wanted to do harm to women. In fact, I know conservatives who have fought hard for the rights of women in Sharia nations – places in the world where women are required to remain covered from head to foot, not go anywhere without a male relative to escort them, and are barred from getting an education. Where were the liberals when this kind of thing was rampant in Afghanistan?

The entire debate revolves around contraceptives. The new federal law requires all employers to offer health insurance to employees and imposes a stiff tax penalty on individuals who do not carry health insurance. That same law requires ALL insurers to cover quite a bit. One of the requirements is that all insurance plans cover OB/GYN services and contraceptives for women.

There’s one problem with that: the Catholic church teaches that contraceptives of any kind, including condoms, are a sin according to scripture. I disagree with the Catholic church on this point, but that’s beside the point. According to the First Amendment the Catholic church has a right to their belief; since that belief does not cause deliberate physical harm to congregants nor victimize those who are not congregants, that belief cannot be abridged by any law. Here’s where it gets complicated…the Catholic church also runs hospitals and other non-profit organizations. They have more than a few employees. They don’t always require those employees to be in good standing with the church, but they don’t allow insurance that covers contraceptive medication, either.

Enter Sandra Fluke.

Denied entry to the actual committee hearings on the contraceptive mandate, she gave a planned speech riddled with errors and unverifiable claims. One of the first things that she says is that, during law school, contraceptives can cost around $3,000. That statement in itself is misleading; she failed to clarify (I believe she did it deliberately) what that means. There is no way it would cost that much per year. She likely meant throughout the course of law school, which typically runs for around three years. She also said it can cost that much – meaning it’s a possibility. In other words, she’s saying that if someone goes all-out they could spend $1,000 a year on contraceptives not covered by insurance.

Here’s where this gets a little fuzzy for me. According to Planned Parenthood, oral contraceptives can potentially cost anywhere from $15-$50 a month. Wal-Mart carries the generic brands for $4-$7 a month, but we’ll go with the low end of PP’s information. Let’s say it costs $15 a month for oral contraceptives. If you’re on these drugs throughout all of law school, that comes to a total of $540 for three years.

Let’s take a look at some of Fluke’s other claims. She talks about a lesbian friend who was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and obtained a prescription for oral contraceptives. The claim she makes here is that her friend was plunking down more than $100 a month for these drugs because the school refused to cover them. Let’s do the math on this one. If someone is paying $100 a month for drugs, full-time at the end of law school that comes out to right around $3600. So, by that math, sure – it could cost three grand. Where I get lost is why it cost that much and why birth control pills were the only treatment a doctor was able to come up with.

First of all, the most expensive name-brand oral birth control pill currently on the market costs $90 without insurance. Generics that are just as effective when they’re really only being used to treat medical conditions like PCOS are available for free at federal Title X clinics and on the cheap at big-box stores I’ve already listed. I’m wondering how this woman ended up paying over $100 a month for birth control pills. Fluke goes on to say that her friend ended up in the ER with a cyst the size of a tennis ball and had to have her ovary removed and later lamented that she’d never, even if she wanted to, give her mother grandchildren – wait, where was mom when she needed top-of-the-line birth control pills as opposed to generic medication? Doesn’t the Obama healthcare mandate also require insurance companies cover adult children up to age 26 as dependents now if the employee wants? Why couldn’t she go with mom’s insurance for that free birth control that she couldn’t be troubled to go to Title X for?

Then she tells a story that actually makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. She says that a friend was raped, but because she knew Georgetown didn’t cover contraceptives the woman supposedly assumed that was how they treated all of women’s health issues – so, supposedly, the woman never went to the doctor or got tested for STD’s.

When you are raped, whether you are male or female you should go nowhere until you have made contact with the police. Here’s how this works: you file a police report. Regardless of how much time has passed, the police will immediately take you to be examined by what’s known as a SANE nurse (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner). The nurse is highly trained and SANE’s are the only people qualified to collect forensic evidence after a sexual assault. After the exam, the nurse will discuss STD’s and give you prescriptions for three medications – one of which is for a morning-after pill that can be obtained for ten bucks and, in most states, will be reimbursed by victim assistance.

What’s even more galling is her final statement, after talking about how she was told she should have gone to school somewhere else: “And even if that meant going to a less prestigious university, we refuse to pick between a quality education and our health. And we resent that in the 21st century, anyone think it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.” She speaks as if going to a school more prestigious than a state university – say, the University of Texas (Hook ’em) – is a right. Elitism at its finest.

The claim she is making is that Georgetown’s policies are so oppressive for women that it’s an untenable situation, and it’s a bald-faced lie. As a woman and a lesbian, I don’t want Sandra Fluke trying to speak for me. I would never want someone who so blatantly twists the truth to represent me for anything – certainly not my health.

In the past week, a whirlwind of events have taken place. It mostly centers around Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student, going before a “mock” panel held by Nancy Pelosi after Darrel Issa determined that Fluke had no expertise on First Amendment (specifically the religion clause) issues and could not testify before the actual committee. The subject? Healthcare laws requiring ALL employers, including religious non-profit organizations, to provide healthcare coverage that covers all contraceptives for women.

I’ll get to the ins and outs of Fluke’s ridiculous claims later, but for now I want to focus on what everyone else has focused on since this charade first began. For three days after her testimony before Pelosi’s mock committee, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called Fluke a slut. I wholeheartedly disagree with his words; he never should have said it regardless of how frustrated he may have been by how ridiculous the debate has become. Even when I found out several years ago that my girlfriend was using me to cheat on the woman I’d been told was her ex, I wouldn’t have called her a slut; it’s not a term that should be used to describe any woman. Other words fall into that category, too (this next part is not safe for work or the kiddies) – bitch, cunt, twat and whore are among them. I’ve been called all of the above by angry liberals who don’t believe I have the right to keep breathing because of my political beliefs.

So has Bill Maher.

Maher has slung every misogynistic slur you can imagine at Sarah Palin, yet not one liberal has stood up to tell him that he’s wrong. For years he has called her all of the names I just listed and insulted Sarah’s intelligence at every turn, but the only people who recognize his hateful hypocrisy for what it really is are the conservatives who were insulted by his comments in the first place. Liberals have proven with Bill Maher that they are completely unwilling to police their own and, in fact, will rejoice when someone in their ranks does stoop to such low levels.

Just to make sure Fluke’s feelings weren’t hurt, President Obama called her up after Rush’s comments were aired by the media to tell her what a good job she’d done. She’s now making the rounds on all the requisite liberal daytime talk shows and is referring everyone to Media Matters. Fox News can’t get her publicist to return calls, however, and she’s now being represented – yes, this woman who came out of nowhere now has PR backing – by a firm owned by the current administration’s own Anita Dunn. She’s being held up as the underdog heroine of the left wing.

Today, Jay Carney held a press conference where he was asked if Obama would return a $1M donation from liberal hatemonger Bill Maher. Carney said that no, the money would not be returned – then went on to say, “language that denigrates women is inappropriate,” but it is not the President’s place to be the “arbiter” of every controversial statement.

Then, to dismiss the controversy, Super PAC head Bill Burton (the very man who has refused to return the money donated by Maher) said this about the whole thing: “The notion that there is an equivalence between what a comedian has said during the course of his career, and what the de facto leader of the Republican Party said to sexually degrade a woman who engaged in a political debate of our time is crazy.” He later referred to Maher’s comments as being made “in the past” and flatly said that Rush had lied about Fluke.

That Burton doesn’t realize just how misogynistic his buddy Maher really can be is an insult to my intelligence. What’s worse, there are women out there who will buy his ludicrous argument. Somehow, I have a very hard time believing that they would be as forgiving if, say, Ron White took the stage and said some of this stuff about liberal figures (not that Ron White is conservative, but you get my point):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2OUJ8ZUTiI]

My favorite there was “the Maverick and the MILF!” That was classy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGE3G5kfzps]

I have to ask, where was this wit when Obama mispronounced “corpsman” TWICE, in front of two different audiences?

Where was Maher’s apology after all of this? Come to think of it, where was Keith Olbermann’s apology when he called Michelle Malkin a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it”? Oh, right…he just “apologized” today, three years after the fact, after ranting that he had every right to say what he said in the first place. Maher has never even attempted to hide his contempt for women and his belief that all conservatives are morons, and this is what we get from left-wing women:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikW7ljSm3Fs]

UPDATE: I forgot to include the link to the news story where I found the quotes. Click here.

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz came out swinging today in an interview on Megyn Kelly’s show on Fox News (H/T to Doug Powers for the link). While talking about the Obamacare mandate that all health insurance for women cover birth control, DWS claimed that “there needs to be a balance” between religious employers who object to the use of contraceptives and the employees who don’t agree. Apparently the Democrats believe it is up to them what employers are willing to cover, religious affiliation be damned.

The First Amendment holds no sway any longer.

The argument has been over the healthcare mandate and the requirement that any insurance that covers women also cover contraceptives, regardless of whether that woman is a lesbian not planning to have children or a woman who has had a hysterectomy and is physically incapable of having children. It also does not take religious beliefs into account. Catholics have always considered contraceptives of any kind a sin. The Catholic Church also runs many hospitals and assisted-living facilities all over the country and have never offered health insurance that covers contraceptives. It has never been an issue until now – now that the Democrats have required every single health insurance policy covering women to cover contraceptives. Democrats are refusing to back down.

The most incredible quote from DWS of all, though, is this: “The flip side of this is that religious institutions shouldn’t be imposing their values, necessarily, on their employees who don’t necessarily subscribe to those values.”

Basically, in saying this for the DNC, she’s saying that it’s perfectly okay for them to impose their values on the entire country, but it’s completely unacceptable for anyone else to do that.

It seems we are locked in a never-ending battle between conservatives and liberals. Both sides believe they are correct in their worldview. Both sides have been angry and defensive at some point or another. Although I have experienced a great deal more vitriol from liberals, I’ve certainly heard of vitriol coming from the right (usually from those as closed-minded and uneducated as those on the far left; of course, I’ve never met a person who came to any extreme beliefs through being educated and keeping an open mind, nor have I met an extremist who admitted to being extreme).

The thing that makes me scratch my head is that both sides think they’re right for the same reasons – yet neither has stopped to ponder the reasons. Those reasons are morality and conscience.

One does not need to be religious to recognize some sort of morality; religion has no corner on the moral market. If you have ever said “that was wrong,” or “this is the right thing to do,” you are speaking from your own moral center, whatever that may be. When you claim that moral center, however, and you fail to live by it, you make yourself an absolute hypocrite – religion holds no monopoly on that, either.

I find it interesting when liberals attack me and my friends (interesting in that “I’d like to psychoanalyze you” kind of way). Liberals always, without fail, attack along the same lines: you’re supporting the people who hate us, you’re a traitor, they’re intolerant, they will never respect you, how can you do this to us, you must hate yourself, you’re a self-loathing closet case, you (insert string of profanities here)!

Gay liberals will point to so-called Christians who uniformly quote a handful of out-of-context scriptures and call homosexuality sick, twisted and sinful – then either call them hypocrites or, without knowing anything about Christian scriptures, try to point out what they see as absurdities in those scriptures. They love to point out that these folks are hypocrites by saying, “that’s not very Christ-like!”

At the same time, they demand the very tolerance that they refuse to give. They say that Christians who harp on homosexuality as the ultimate sin create an atmosphere of hostility toward gay people, then turn around and create an atmosphere of hostility toward any person who doesn’t follow their line of thinking. In so doing, they become the very same monster they have made Christians out to be – tragically, for the same reasons.

You see, gay liberals will explain their behavior away by saying, “I don’t have to tolerate people who are intolerant.” I have to ask, though, who decides who is truly intolerant? Since you’re saying that they are definitely wrong, that means you have some sort of moral center. How did you decide that they were wrong? Your own conscience? If so, what is your conscience measured by? Who or what provided your moral compass – was it faith, reason, or emotional convenience?

If it is faith, then I have to know which god would give us the right to commit the very same sin which we condemn in others. If reason, I must know which school of thought confuses a closed mind with an open one. The only thing that makes sense to me is emotional convenience – I’m right, everyone else is wrong, and my best argument is going to be a slew of personal attacks, but that is acceptable for me because I feel that I have the moral high ground.

How is that any different from people who interpret the Bible to say that gay people should be put to death? On a different level, how is saying that you pity me and my conservative values very far removed from Christians who say that they pity us because we’re sick and need to be delivered from homosexuality?

It all boils down to a single question: how do you know that your morality is more right than another person’s?

If your answer is anything other than, “it’s what I believe, and I don’t think anyone should be forced to see it my way,” you are the very animal you accuse them of being.

Recently, in the comments of the vlog I posted where I called out gay liberals for their blissful ignorance, one user said that it was somehow one-sided to “only call out liberals who say mean things.” Of course, this was a user with whom I had never had a discussion before and he had no idea that I have, in fact, called out the people on the right who have uneducated ideas about what homosexuality is about; he was commenting on a single video and had no idea what my beliefs were, but he assumed and, naturally, he never admitted he might well be wrong.

This is going to be one of those Come-To-Jesus posts where we sit down and have a good talk about the religious view of homosexuality and the place of both in society.

It starts with a story out of Wisconsin. The Hawks Post, the student newspaper at Shawano High School, published an op-ed mashup between two students of opposing viewpoints. That is perfectly normal for a high school newspaper. What isn’t normal, however, is the subject matter: gay marriage. Even more abnormal was the fact that the student who wrote the dissenting opinion did so from a completely religious perspective, something that doesn’t really jibe with the continued assault on the rights of religious students to express their beliefs.

According to the Green Bay Press Gazette, that student wrote, “If one is a practicing Christian, Jesus states in the Bible that homosexuality is (a) detestable act and sin which makes adopting wrong for homosexuals because you would be raising the child in a sin-filled environment. A child adopted into homosexuality will get confused because everyone else will have two different-gendered parents that can give them the correct amount of motherly nurturing and fatherly structure. In a Christian society, allowing homosexual couples to adopt is an abomination.”

Pretty harsh. Scripturally inaccurate, for sure, but I’ll address that later. First I want to point out a few other things. The article was seen by a 13-year-old student whose parents are a gay couple, one of several in that school district who lead very balanced, healthy homes. When he asked his fathers about it they were both stunned and upset; they talked to the superintendent of the district, who also expressed shock at the article. Almost immediately, the district issued an apology and called the article a form of bullying. One of the fathers was quoted in the article I linked above saying that the printing of that article in a school paper “sets us back 20 or 30 years” and claimed that it could lead to bullying of gay students at the school.

I have a few things to add to this debate before I get into anything else.

1. This debate has no place in a public high school newspaper. Period. It never should have been done. The reason I say this is that it was an op-ed mashup; when you give one student the green light to write in support of any gay rights, you open the door for other students with deeply-held religious beliefs about this subject to insist that their opinion be printed as well. They are going to find ways to express their beliefs, but when you give those beliefs space in a school-sponsored publication you might as well be giving those views some form of validity. It should have been left alone.

2. Once the damage was done, the worst thing the district could possibly have done was attack the dissenting student. Believe me, that is exactly what they did when they apologized and called him a bully. That student doesn’t understand why his views are so reviled, and he is going home to a family and a church body that is affirming what he wrote as a courageous stand. Everything you say against him is, to them, persecution; you are validating everything they’re teaching him.

3. Far be it from me to criticize a parent, since I am not one myself…I am, however, an aunt, and I also remember quite well what it was like when my mother would pound on my principal’s desk about the things they were teaching that she didn’t like. It was embarrassing because it made me a target of the real bullies in school who didn’t claim any religion at all. If you push too hard, you’re setting your own kids apart more than anyone else is. Plus, if you get upset about it, they will, too – turn it into a learning experience, and do it peacefully. You might make more friends than you thought you could.

Todd Starnes of Fox News reported on it as well, and if you read the comments you’ll see some pretty intense back-and-forth from some genuinely intellectual people and other folks who…well, aren’t quite that well educated. If they were going to let one student write about the subject, then it was only fair that they let a dissenting opinion in, and since they made that decision they should be standing by it. Instead, the district has behaved in the worst way possible.

I’m going to say what they are not going to let anyone else say…while this student has his right to his opinion, he is wrong.

Jesus never, not once, addressed homosexuality. Never in any of His sermons, prayers or responses to the religious leaders did He ever say one word about homosexuality. The only place where it is called an abomination is in Leviticus 20 (which this student did cite) – the very same ceremonial law that also called for the death penalty for adulterers, children who disrespect their parents, idolaters, soothsayers (what we know today as astrologers), and married couples who have sex during the wife’s menstrual cycle (no, I’m not joking). That ceremonial law takes up nearly the whole of Leviticus, and the ceremonial law was exactly what Jesus meant when He said He had come to fulfill the law (Matthew 5:17). The ceremonial law and the moral law were very distinct and separate. Jesus’ sacrifice – His torture, death on the cross, and resurrection – was the atonement for sin that the ceremonial law called for according to scripture. The biggest reason for the ceremonial law was to set Israel apart completely from other nations, and because Christ is the way to salvation now, the ceremonial law is moot for us.

Nowhere is that point so clearly made than in Galatians 2:15-16: “We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.” In the very next chapter Paul reminds the Galatians that if you only cite part of the law but do not keep it all, you call a curse on yourself. I would caution religious conservatives who like to point out those scriptures – you’re taking scripture out of context.

My next post will be a little different. I will be dropping names, pictures and direct quotes from a couple of genuine hatemongers.